Gillian Phillips says she entered local government 'slightly by mistake'.

On completing her finals in 1967 there were only two local firms in Hereford big enough to take on articled clerks, so the offer of a position at Herefordshire County Council was snapped up.She qualified in 1970 and worked with the authority until the 1974 reorganisation of local government, which saw the amalgamation of Herefordshire with Worcest-ershire.

'It was not a particularly happy wedding and there was quite a lot of political controversy at the time,' she recalls.Reorganisation fever is gripping local government once again, in the shape of the Local Government Commission's peripatetic review of council structures in England's shire areas.

West Sussex, where Miss Phillips is now assistant county secretary, has itself just voted to back the status quo as its recommendation to the commission.Are there any lessons from 1974 that she will bring to the authority should the commission choose to ignore the county's advice?'One of the things we learned is that you need more formal procedures than you might have lived with before.

Any reorganisation, however well managed, takes away the informal liaison structures and you have to redraw everything until that informal network grows back.'The Department of the Environment's guidance to the commission has already been the subject of successful judicial challenges by counties (see [1994] Gazette, 2 February, 8) and there is little doubt that other authorities have judicial review as a fall-back option should proposed changes appear unreasonable to them.Miss Phillips moved to West Sussex in 1979 and she now heads the county's legal department from offices in the centre of Chichester.She is the first woman to secure the top post at the Law Society's Local Government Group, but doubts whether, as a woman, she has suffered discrimination on her way up.

'One is never sure whether one is being discriminated against,' she says.One of the key themes emerging for her year in office will be the promotion of the status of local government as a good career option for lawyers.'I think one of the major problems that local government has is that the reality and the perception of it are miles apart, and that is a problem we really ought to be addressing,' Miss Phillips says.Lawyers continue to fill the shoes of a large number of the chief executive posts at councils and Miss Phillips notes: 'There have been massive improvements in the management competence of most local authorities.'And, despite the wide variety of styles and approaches across authorities, she says that the common threads of genuine commitment and a public service ethos persist.'I think it is a great shame if there isn't a lot of public sympathy for local government,' says Miss Phillips.

'Of course there are occasions where local government does things which are either illegal, stupid or even corrupt.

But if you look at us - and there is research to support this - as an administrative system, against the international background, one of the startling things about local government is that there is so little corruption.'And she cites health authorities, the City and government as other institutions which have not been free from criticism of late.Miss Phillips also voices concern at Britain's growing quangocracy, which has seen powers and responsibilities transferred from democratic local authorities to unaccountable, unelected bodies.'I think it is a great shame if we move to a quangocracy, and I am not sure where the democratic authority for that as a policy comes from,' she says.'If you were to look at public opinion on that issue, it would quite clearly support local democracy.

There has not been a Gadarene rush for schools to opt out, there has not been enormous enthusiasm for the statutory powers to move away from public housing.

These initiatives were designed for an image of the public who wanted to get away from their local authorities and I do not think that is happening.'With the likes of Westminster or Lambet h setting the tone for local government, the debate on general powers for authorities, and pressure for the end of the ultra vires doctrine, has been a tricky one to advance.But Miss Phillips observes: 'There is a certain amount of romanticism in this country about general powers, because when you actually begin to contrast them with the situation, say, in France, the powers are not quite as general as they might appear from a long distance away.'On her busy agenda for the coming year is the advent of compulsory competitive tendering for 45% of council legal services, although the proportion is technically still 'out for consultation'.The first invitations to private firms to tender will be published later this year for London and the metropolitan authorities.Miss Phillips plans to press for extra time for councils in the shire areas to prepare for CCT, so that at least two years elapse between the setting up of any new shadow authorities in an area, and the invitation to the private sector to bid for work.'Anything less that that would throw real doubt on the practicability of carrying government policy through,' she warns.On rights of audience, local government lawyers are waiting with bated breath for the further advice sought from the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee on legal education and conduct by the four senior judges who last year deferred their decision on the fate of employed solicitors (see [1993] Gazette, 17 December, 4).Miss Phillips dismisses as 'nonsense' the view that local government lawyers do not have enough lower court experience of advocacy, and says that a simple test of the number of days spent in court could be applied to determine who qualifies for the long sought-after rights.